SEOs are panicked that AI is taking over and their jobs are done. But I am uncharacteristically optimistic that this is not the case.
Yes, AI has changed SEO forever (and will continue to do so), but it’s not going to kill it. We just have to adapt. How? Prioritizing “deep content” for topics that cannot be answered quickly or easily.
Here are three reasons why I think this is the future of SEO.
If you ask ChatGPT how to reinstall macOS, you can easily follow its instructions to get the job done. He explains clearly what you have to do and how to do it.
This is the kind of “shallow” subject matter that AI comes in for.
Once Google releases SGE to the masses (which it will likely to happen soon), researchers will not need to click for answers to these types of questions. They will be right there in the search results thanks to AI. The robots will steal the traffic.
Compare this with ChatGPT’s answer on a topic like how to perform a content audit;:
Even with half the answer cut out, the point is clear: it tells us what to do but not how to do it.
- How do we choose the right target?
- How do we pull data from Google Analytics, CMS and web crawlers to compile a content inventory?
- What are the “right tools” to help control?
Because this is a deeper topic, it needs a deeper answer. You can’t get that from AI. You have to click on a result to find a guide from someone with real experience running content reviews.
These are the kinds of things you need to prioritize in an AI world.
How do you find “deep” topics?
There is no exact science. It has a lot to do with knowing your industry well and applying common sense. However, if you’re doing keyword research, you can narrow things down by excluding keywords that trigger featured snippets. After all, if Google thinks a query can already be answered well with a featured snippet, an AI answer will definitely do the job.
You can do this in Keyword Explorer with the SERP Feature Filter:
You can also use the Determine Intent button in Keyword Explorer to learn more about what people are searching for. If it seems like something can’t be answered quickly or easily, it’s probably a “deep” issue.
For example, it tells us that many of the people searching for “content review” want “a detailed process for conducting a content review, including standards”:
It will be nearly impossible for genetic AI to give researchers this — especially the patterns.
If you’re still not sure if a topic is “deep” enough for the AI to fail, paste your topic into ChatGPT or Gemini and see what it generates. If leaves a lot to be desired and tells you just that whatnot the howthen it’s probably a deep issue.
Backlinks are still a ranking factor. AI hasn’t changed that. You have to earn them if you want to rank for anything competitive, and the best way to do that is to showcase unique experiences, expertise, and data in your content.
For example, we got a link from adobe.com (DR 96) when they reported statistics from our study on how many pages get no search traffic:
And we got a link from hubspot.com (DR 93) when they mentioned the SEO reference template we made:
But here’s the problem:
It’s hard to do this for shallow topics because you can’t add much.
For example, take his subject how to reinstall macOS. What exactly can you write here beyond the same basic guidelines that appear in every other post? Nothing. It is almost impossible to create linkable content on this topic. It’s too shallow.
It’s hard to rank for shallow topics because your content is never unique. It’s just a bunch of words that have already been said a million times. There is nothing below the surface for people to report and connect with.
It’s hard to make shallow topics interesting. I think this is why there is so much boring “SEO content” out there. You know what I’m talking about: no personality, just vague answers to boring questions nestled under keyword-rich H2s.
Now, I know what you’re probably thinking:
“But Josh, this is what works! We’re only doing it because it’s what Google wants!”
This may be true for shallow topics, but we’ve already discussed how AI will steal traffic from them in the not-too-distant future. For deep topics that require more explanation, your content should be engaging and interesting.
There are (at least) two reasons for this.
Interesting content = “information gain”
Even if bringing something new and interesting to the table doesn’t earn you more backlinks, it does may I’m still helping you they rank higher on Google.
This is because Google cares about original content and almost certainly has mechanisms in place to identify and reward it. They even patented a mechanism for the “information gain” rating in 2022.
Engaging content = better user signals
If you want to spark conversation among SEOs, direct the conversation to user signals.
Many in the industry have been convinced for years that user signals like CTR are ranking signals. You may be familiar with Rand Fishkin’s infamous mini experiment from 2014 where he asked his Twitter followers to click on a search result en masse, leading to a #1 ranking that night.
Google says signals like these aren’t ranking factors because they’re too noisy.
If you think about it, clicks in general are incredibly noisy. People do strange things on search results pages. They click around like crazy and it’s generally really, really hard to clean that data.
But… they also say this on their “How Search Works” page:
We also use aggregates and anonymous interaction data to assess whether search results are relevant to queries. We transform this data into signals that help machine learning systems better assess relevance.
Tomayto, tomahto. Directly or indirectly, user data affects Google’s algorithms. If all you post is boring, uninspiring content that AI could write in a heartbeat, no one is going to read or engage with it. This can negatively affect your ability to rank.
Final thoughts
If you want the summary of this ChatGPT-like post, it’s this: prioritize deep topics that AI will struggle to answer, and create interesting and engaging content for them. This is how you create an SEO moat in an AI world.
I know it can seem like a waste of time, especially in a world of ever-shrinking attention spans. It’s easy to convince yourself that sloppy AI answers are what people really want.
This is exactly how I felt a few months ago… before Tim kindly set me straight 😅
Maybe it’s because he’s my boss and I respect him, but I think there’s some real truth to that comment. People still want to read content, but only if it’s engaging and deep.
So, let’s make it our collective mission to pick wiser battles and create interesting content that stands the test of time.
